Don't Forget Climate Change

I was pleased that there were three articles about justice and the environment in the October 2010 Bulletin. Peter Slavin’s “Activist on Coal River” and David Pacchioli’s “Rock and an Old Place” are vivid documents of people struggling with relentless fuel extraction.

Ian Barbour’s “Justice, Technology and the Environment” wrestles with global environmental justice with a moderate American Christian conscientiousness and detailed thoughtfulness. I appreciated the sections “Consumption and Visions of the Good Life” and “Global Justice.”

Climate change, however, is my concern because I see it as an emergency for every person on earth. Industrialized countries’ greenhouse gas emissions have melted glaciers at the heads of the great rivers, altered monsoon patterns, and caused floods and droughts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Many people have already died of famine. Firestorms have swept Australia, and the United States itself is beginning to experience intense storms and desertification. Temperatures of oceans and atmosphere are rising. Global climate change is accelerating because of loss of polar ice, vast melting of permafrost, great forest fires, and enormous microbiological changes. A worst-case scenario implies ocean anoxia and the consequent loss of oxygen in the atmosphere.

“For that which befalleth the sons of man befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.”—Ecclesiastes 3:19